G*Nice: Thoughts on losing Amy

At time of writing, I am in the UK feeling sad and bemused. I am not one to place any significance on coincidence as a lightning rod for impending news. So the next sentences might mean absolutely nothing… but they are 100 per cent true. On Friday, July 22 while in Soho, I was with my tailor talking suits and casually nodded to a well-dressed guy who I was later told was Amy Winehouse's friend. The next day I met up with a friend in a tattoo shop where, coincidentally, I met the artist who had previously done some of Amy's inkwork. One hour later I was browsing the music biographies in a famous bookshop and almost picked up The Trouble with Amy, a tabloid-type paperback that promised to lift the lid on one of our generation's brightest but darkest stars. I chucked it back on the shelf after browsing the sleeve notes, likening it mentally to a broken pencil - pointless. One hour later, while strolling the city streets that I love, my phone exploded with SMS messages asking me if I had heard about Amy Winehouse. I didn't even need to send any back asking, "What happened?" as my heart both sunk and broke at the same time, knowing just what must have happened.

There are many things that bond us closely together in the modern age. Technology that connects us so close that we feel we don't actually have to really see anybody, and the ability to broadcast our every thought with the help ofa tweeting blue bird. But despite these advances, they all pale in insignificance compared to the power of music from an amazing artist.

Not all of you reading would have liked Amy and what you thought you knew about her from her much-publicised personal life, but surely you must agree that she was something special as a writer and singer of modern torch songs. She like many artists, do not set out to be role models, but once thrust into the spotlight of success, there are suddenly expectations made that few of us could live up to.

I, like many, paid good money to see her in Dubai and the show was horrible. But if you check back on my review, I think I stated that it was a calculated risk I was willing to take. The little I knew of her as a performer, but what I think I understood of her from her amazing albums, is that she was a true artistic soul who was singing deeply personal songs. I knew that she wasn't a shiny pop starlet who could just go through the motions and belt out the hits with the aid of autotune. She seemed both bored and nervous, drowning on a massive stage in her small cocktail dress, and it just didn't happen. And now it never will again, with the tragic news of her death at the age of 27.

I am genuinely saddened by the realisation that someone that brightened my life with her sweet soul music just didn't have the support system or the will to hang on in there just for herself. As I listen to Back To Black, writing this with a tear in my eye, her words seem to provide the full stop to her sparkling but tragic life… "And now the final frame, love is a losing game".

Frank-ly Yours
G*Nice